Direct Drive

@juanmanuelfangioii Do you believe that a motor upgrade, like those from Origin Live, would make noticeable improvement with a Thorens TD 145? It does seem that a belt driven table lends itself to more upgrades and refinements than a direct drive table but that may be due to my lack of knowledge.

@goofyfoot I really do not have an opinion on the Thorens Origin motor upgrade. I have the original German 16-pole synchronous motor albeit it gas been cleaned and tweaked a bit, polished bearing....it is dead silent and over 40 years old.

If it isn't broke don't fix it. 

Listening to it now and I am still amazed how these 40 year old turntables can give the modern stuff a run for their money.  

@terry9 

I may have misunderstood you, but you mentioned that "there is no such thing as instantaneous speed measurement in the real world":  AnalogMagik software does measure instantaneous speed.  I think Fremer may use it, or possibly have some other software by which he determines the variability and stability of speed control of the turntables that he evaluates.  

@Mahler123 - time zone differences accounting for late reply. I'm not saying that the Technics is entry level. But given that you have had two pretty good turntables that didn't float your boat, I'm not sure a Technics 1500 will either and it's a very expensive way of accessing a handful of classical records not available on digital.

The reality is that digital hardware and software has improved very significantly in the last ten years, whereas analogue technology has plateaued to the extent that any improvements being made are largely at the bleeding edge of technology and price.

How does the Denon DP-A100 compare to the Technics models and also older Denons?